In recent years, highly accurate reproduction of visual intensity and contrast rather than the conventional 8-bit color depth is more and more used in many fields, such as medical imaging, high-quality video-enabled computer games and professional studio and home theatre related applications. This process motivates the development of an enhanced dynamic range, which is called high bit-depth herein, for the convenience of comparison with the conventional 8-bit color depth. On contrast to the fact that advances in electronic sensors, processors and storage devices have resulted in very high pixel resolutions for both capturing and display devices, the color capacities of digital imaging systems have evolved in a very slow pace. 8-bit color depth has been dominant for capturing and display devices since the first generation of digitalized visual contents emerged.
Color bit-depth scalability is potentially useful considering the fact that in a considerably long period in the future standard 8-bit and higher-bit digital imaging systems will simultaneously exist in consumer marketplaces. Different color bit-depths are of particular importance for example for terminal display devices during multimedia content deliveries.